


5 Times Tony Dreams of A Child And 1 Time It's Real

by colorworld



Series: My Whole Universe Is With me (May God Never Let It Fade) [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5 times when, Angst, Clara Rose Stark, Clara Stark - Freeform, Emotional, Emotions, F/M, Father Daughter fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Hurt, Hurt Tony Stark, Parent Tony Stark, Sadness, Stark child - Freeform, Tony Stark Daughter, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, dad tony stark, mention of cutting, mention of depression, mention of foster child, mention of rape, no rape or cutting occurs, stark daughter, stark kid, tony stark dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 10:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17917073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorworld/pseuds/colorworld
Summary: She’s running the other way, the sun behind her. Just barely does he get a glimpse of what could be a grill, a fire-lit firepit, some chairs, and….lemonade? Katie is his focus, though. The girl is a small thing, but god, is she a sweet thing, too, with a breeze touching her blue gingham dress and her hair.Then, it’s over and it is the darkness of the room where he and his fiance sleep in peace.OR Tony Stark dreams of having a baby 5 times, but what happens when it's real?





	5 Times Tony Dreams of A Child And 1 Time It's Real

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW I HAVENT WRITTEN IN A WHILE BUT BARE WITH ME I GOT A LIL INSPO PLEASE ENJOY, PLEASE REVIEW?!

_ An image so vibrant and so life-like that he remembered it the best and the most.  _

 

_ There’s a little body running through the greenest, most well-trimmed grass he’s ever seen with a sun that had a bright reign in this doming, intensely-colored sky above him. An adorable, feminine giggle comes from the toddler-sized figure, auburn long locks hanging down that are illuminated by sunlight and seemingly pale arms and legs, but the sun is shining so bright that it’s hard to tell the skin tone.  _

 

_ “I found it, Daddy!”  _

 

_ “Where was it, baby girl?” _

 

_ His own voice, but more importantly, the most precious-no, more than precious voice he had ever heard.  _

 

_ “Right here!” The redhead child picks up a minute pearl stud earring and drops it into the palm of her hand. Meanwhile, there’s a faint smell of bacon, but, god, the air is so fresh. It’s like he’s breathing for the first time in his life, something so fresh and joyful about the oxygen of this beautiful field where they were.  _

 

_ That’s when Tony can see her face.  _

 

_ There are not enough words in the official dictionary to describe how precious or adorable or cute or jaw-dropping she was.  _

 

_ Her face is porcelain, too, like the rest of her, but there’s a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose that adds practically another dose of innocence and adorableness to the child. The eyes of the child are wide, curious, jubilant, and free like a child’s should be. _

 

_ They weren’t what his were. _

 

_ The color is intensified by her happiness, the hazel green is so unique and it will never stay out of his head for as long as he knows it. It’s not his or Pepper’s…It’s a mixture. _

 

_ This daughter is a genetic cocktail of them, and she is more perfect than he could’ve ever concocted in his own daily thoughts.  _

 

_ “Okay, Katie, go bring that to mommy.” _

 

_ “‘Kay, Daddy!”  _

 

_ She’s running the other way, the sun behind her. Just barely does he get a glimpse of what could be a grill, a fire-lit firepit, some chairs, and….lemonade? Katie is his focus, though. The girl is a small thing, but god, is she a sweet thing, too, with a breeze touching her blue gingham dress and her hair. _

 

Then, it’s over and it is the darkness of the room where he and his fiance sleep in peace. 

 

The next time is not much alike. He had a daughter again, but with a different name and appearance. Her skin is a little bit darker, no freckles, her hair is her mommy’s, and her eyes are courtesy of her daddy’s. She’s in a toddler’s onesie sandwiched between her parents on a sofa. Her body is so warm against him, Tony can feel his little girl’s heartbeat and that’s all he hears before it’s over. 

 

“I had the weirdest dream last night, Rhodey,” Tony admits two days after the first dream in the compound common area. 

 

Rhodey furrows his brows. “What was it?”

 

“Well-uh-I don’t know-but it was like-almost like we had a kid-well, there was a kid, I don’t know if it was ours, but I could feel her little heartbeat and I just barely got a glimpse of her hair!” Tony rambles all at once. 

 

Rhodey is perplexed and absorbing. “Um...You dreamt you had a kid?” He concludes. 

 

“Think so,” Tony nods. He relaxes in his compound lounge chair, letting loose about what he experienced in his sleep. “But I had a dream about having a kid the night before last night, and…”

 

Rhodey sits down in the chair across from him, considering he just arrived and Tony spilled it all on him as he walked in. “What? What was it, Tony?”

 

“... _ Perfect _ ,” Tony whispers in response. Again does he see the little body running, and is that a bit of the daily strenuous pain seeping away every time he sees her? 

 

Rhodey hums, a trait adapted from his best friend. “Have you talked to Pepper about it?”

 

“...No,” He meekly replies. Tony couldn’t quite imagine Pepper’s face-what the hell would it be? They weren’t married yet, so what business would he have about talking about kids? 

 

“You should.”

 

“I don’t know how she’d react. Maybe she’d hate having a kid-like, I know she definitely likes kids, but there’s no way for me to really know unless I ask and I just don’t wanna ask-”

 

“Tones, slow down.”

 

“Uh, what happened to me always telling you to calm down, Platypus?”

 

Rhodey rolls his eyes at his best friend’s shield of defense and is about to speak before Tony sharply interrupts him again. 

 

“Ah, no, lemme speak first, Princess Kate Middleton!”

 

“She’s a duchess, Tony,” Rhodey murmurs. His nicknames never. Ever. Fucking. _ Ended.   _ “But...does mean you want a kid?”

 

“I don’t know, Rhodles-”

 

“When you call me Rhodles, it means you’re stressed, why are you so stressed about this?”

 

“I’m not stressed, I’m just talking about what happened.”

 

“If it stresses you out, talk to Pepper about it, she’s there for you, I’m not equipped for this kinda soul searching madness.”

 

Tony just swallows and nods, but it didn’t mean he was going to talk to Pepper.

 

The next dream is faint but different. The baby is a boy with these strawberry blonde locks from his mom and his brown eyes were his own. Tony sees his plump, immaculate cheeks and the softest eyes in the world. His child is watching a movie with him, maybe Star Wars? He’s chucking popcorn into his mouth more and more and more. This dream lasted a while until the movie ended, but it wasn’t quite the caliber of intensity like the first one. 

 

Tony is with Peter at an ice cream parlor, considering how much Peter loved going out for ice cream with his mentor, and Tony loved it as well whether he would say so or not. This boy was practically his surrogate son, at this point. He was always there for him, and it would be that way or kill him was a literal way to interpret philosophy. 

 

“Mr. Stark?”

 

Tony blinks out of his daze of thought. “Yeah, kid-and how many times have I told you to call me Tony?” 

 

“S-Sorry…Tony.”

 

“Good. What were you gonna ask, kiddo?” His facial expression softens a bit towards the teenager. 

 

“Um, nothing, you just looked deep in thought,” Peter reports his observation, eating a bite of chocolate ice cream. 

 

The sun decides to make a move and is now hiding above a thick cloud, blocking out a lot of light. 

 

Tony sighs, unsure of what to say to the kid...But he could be honest with him, right? The boy was honest with him, so there would be nothing wrong with this...right?

 

“I just…” Tony starts, but he’s not looking at Peter, so he shifts his brown eyes to Peter’s. It was another creepy thought, but he really sees how much the spider-teen looks like him sometimes-it’s uncanny...Not that he had a biological son….right? 

 

“I’ve been having these dreams where Pepper and I had a baby,” Tony admits. “The first time, there was this little girl...and it was just so vivid-everything was just really happy,” He describes as the sun is back again. 

 

“Aww, that’s so sweet, Mr. Stark!”

 

“Mmmmmm I guess,” Tony hesitantly replies. He sees the first dream again and again more than the others, still, with no doubt. “Then I had other dreams, but it’s just the same stuff.”

 

“Are you going to have a kid?” Peter’s eyes are wide with awe. 

 

“What? Probably not, I don’t know what Pepper wants.”

 

Peter is finished with his ice cream as the sun is heating everything back up again. At least it’s a clear-skies day and the temperature isn’t scorching. “Well don’t usually couples talk about this stuff, Mr. Stark?”

 

Tony, once again, sighs. “Yeah, but we’re not even married, yet, Pete, but anything could happen...I’m not really cut out to be a dad, anyways,” He finishes in a casual manner, but deep down, it really was a pang of agony. 

 

“What do you mean you’re not cut out to be a dad, Mr. Stark, you’d be a great dad!” Peter exclaims with enthusiasm.

 

Tony is unsure if he wants to go into the whole sheh-blang of how he had a shitty childhood and his father was a monstrous dad-not even a dad, he was not worth calling “dad”. But with the innocent, precious expression that was just naturally Peter Parker, he decided to save it for later or hopefully never. 

 

He sees another son in the night. His name is Morgan, Pepper’s eccentric uncle’s name. He is so small, swaddled in baby blue with the perfect crystal blue eyes and Tony’s own dark hair. Everything about him is so tiny from his nose, his toes, fingers, and the miniscule-ness of his newborn lashes. Morgan is young, soon yet far to grow into a little boy, a teenager, a man. Oh, what a long time that would be. Unknown to Tony, being a parent meant watching your child grow up so fast. 

 

They’re walking a New York park when he talks to Pepper about it. Of course, this leads to the concern she had over him putting an arc reactor back in his chest and him not having shirts in his closet and such. It was almost brushed under the rug, but they had time to talk about things. Time was back for the two of them. 

 

Of course, they lost it all starting with the man who had the infinity stone of time.

 

Lovely. 

 

Now, Tony is in this spaceship practically alone. Nebula is a stranger, an angry blue one at that. There is no one here, only mute stars above this ship to be there for him. Of course, he’s out in a place he fears most without the people he loves most-hell, people he doesn’t even care about are gone and there are fifty blankets of guilt on his mind, his soul, his body. He could take it, but god, he doesn’t want to. If there was no Pepper, his condition would be something else. 

 

But was Pepper still there?

 

Or was she dust as the rest of them?

 

Tony wants to sob, he wants to shriek, he wants to be home-god, how much he’d fucking love to just be happy. 

 

At the same time, he feels nothing at all. 

 

His body is nothing at all. 

 

He is nothing at all, and he is willing to become nothing at all when the oxygen ran out. 

 

When he drifts, there’s a taste of sunlight that then turns into a starless night

 

_ It’s a girl again, and a gorgeous, precious one, too. Except she’s crying-sobbing alone in a dark room, terrified and a small little girl in a massive world so cruel and so horrible. The world she was in would never deserve her just as she never deserved its horrors.  _

 

_ “Why did you give up, daddy? Wh-wherever you are...you never came home.” _

 

_ New imagery.  _

 

_ There is a girl all alone in a lonely room, sitting on her bed against the window to the dark stormy day. She’s not so little. The girl is a teenager, and he sees just a glimpse of her cognac eyes and he can feel a whole different mind, a whole different story, a whole different person instead of him.  _

 

_ “You never came home, Daddy,” She whispers into the room, so empty without anyone but her decaying self. “Mom’s gone, and you never came home for me.” The auburn-haired teen’s sweatshirt sleeves are up, she’s looking down at the scarred wrist she has with tears ready to spawn out. “I’m in an abusive foster home, I’ve been taken advantage of, I’m on the edge of collapse...God, I wish you were here, I just need a hug,” Her voice cracks through her last word and his daughter is crying hard in this petite room that was all she had.  _

 

_ “He never gets to walk me down the aisle,” Is a quiet voice of a young woman, maybe twenty-five. Her wedding dress is graceful and elegant, her hair is in gorgeous waves, and the face is just an older version of the one he saw before, and the teenage face is just the older version of the toddler's face he saw the first time.  _

 

_ “I know…” Responds a male voice Tony doesn’t know.  _

 

_ “It’s sad,” She whispers. “I’m getting married, but my dad will never know it.” There’s a weak smile, though, created by matte red lips. So much like himself, and so much like her mom. Second to Pepper, this young woman was the most beautiful in the world...And she was his  _ daughter _.  _

 

_ “Maria? You ready?” _

 

The water’s already out of his eyes when he’s awake, no doubt about it.

 

There is silence except for his heart, his breath, and the repeat of Maria in his head. 

 

No emotional choice but to weep in the loneliness of space. 

  
  


“Mr. Stark? You ready to meet your baby girl?”

 

Tony is quick to turn around when he hears the doctor’s voice. Nervous is such an incredible understatement for the man who is about to see his wife and newborn baby. 

 

Heart-race, blood pumping, what the hell happened to him? He was about to see his wife and baby, not have an anxiety attack! It couldn’t be helped, though. Maybe the baby wouldn’t like him-oh please, the baby wasn’t capable of dislike at the time. Thoughts plagued Tony’s head that something was just bound to go wrong. 

 

Except it left his body upon entrance. 

 

Pepper was exhausted considering she just gave birth to a baby, so that’s hard. But what lied in her arms swaddled in the softest baby pink fabric made everything around him nothing.

 

There was nothing at all except Pepper and his baby daughter. 

 

He’s seen babies before, but this was  _ his _ baby. Her skin was pale, yet rosy-cheeked and her eyes were somehow a hazel green he sees when her eyes are open a bit for a moment. There’s a light layer of auburn hair, however that happened, too. She is tiny but miraculously precious and she was  _ his _ baby. 

 

“Wanna hold her?” Pepper whispers. She’s too tired to talk loudly. Plus, her newborn daughter was sleeping. 

 

“Yeah,” He replies, except he didn’t know his voice would be cracked. His wife hands the baby to her, Tony excited and terrified because he could hurt her. He quickly finds that he was not under any universal circumstance could he drop this baby, a reminder of what he already knew. 

 

Tony’s awestruck. The rest of the world does not exist. There is this baby, his and the love of his life’s. He can’t get over how precious and warm she is, and her face looks so soft that he’s afraid to touch it. 

 

Her eyes are opening back up again. This time, they stay wide open, gazing up at her father’s face and his dark-colored eyes. 

 

“Hey…” Tony whispers. “Hey, angel…” He just barely giggles with tears in his eyes.

 

The baby giggles, herself, but he almost doesn’t hear it. It’s more like a soft coo, but it’s precious enough and he is sealed in love with his baby daughter forever. 

 

“What do you think, honey? Does she look like a Clara to you?” Pepper softly inquires from her bed. 

 

Tony nods. “Yeah...She’s our Clara Rose Stark.”

  
  


Day three and he was absolutely still in pure adoration with his baby as he would be forever. 

 

It is night and he can’t sleep, not when his baby is awake. But he’s seemed to calm her into the transition into sleep. He holds her in the dark, except for moonlight shining through the window. It’s illuminating her face, but it doesn’t bother her. The light is gentle enough. 

 

Even with the endlessness of joy that comes from being a new father to a baby girl, fear of screwing up spawns the memories of dreams from long ago when he first thought about a daughter. Tony sees his toddler daughter crying in the dark. He sees his little girl as a foster daughter who’s been abused, raped, a cutter, depressed, and alone, begging for her daddy to come home to hug her. He sees his daughter on her wedding day, the most beautiful young woman he’s ever seen, but she has no dad to walk her down the aisle.

 

He could honestly cry right now just thinking about this baby in his arms growing up and she faces what he saw in dreams. No, his dreams never became real...But as a father-even a new father...You always fear your child’s pain more than absolutely anything in the world. And in intense purity, Tony was a father in that aspect. He feared his little girl’s pain. 

 

Tony breathes out quietly, cautious not to wake the baby. “I know you don’t know it yet, sweetheart...But I’m this superhero-well, not a hero, but they call me a superhero...I have this suit-just a big suit of armor...But no matter what, I will always be there-I swear to you on my life...Everything I’ve done, everything I’ll do someday, and everything I’ll ever do is to protect my world. You and your mommy are my world,” His voice cracked at the very last word, and he tries to hold it together, but it’s hard like so many other things. Oh, how impossible does he find it that he got the potential of the first dream from long ago after all the hardship, the anxiety, the depression, the wondering if him being on the very Earth he was born on mattered to anyone. The wondering was gone, though. It mattered to Pepper, and it would matter to Clara. 

 

His breath is shaky to continue. “When I put on the armor...I take on more power than any human is really meant to have...and maybe more responsibility than my heart can truly bare...But I’ll always protect you….no matter what it takes,” Tony finishes in near silence, his daughter fast asleep. 

 

The moonlight is still there, as are the stars out their home’s window. They got the farm that they’ve thought about before. It was peaceful outside always, an area that tended to be sunny a lot, green flat pastures all around. Their home wasn’t incredibly huge or decked out with marble from head to toe, but it was a farmhouse design with some shiplap walls, simple rooms, and, of course, a room for the baby with pinks, trinkets, and a rocking chair where he sat with his baby right now by the window to the night. 

 

He kisses his baby girl’s forehead. “I love you so much, baby girl...So  _ so  _ much.” 

  
  


Tony comes to a realization.

 

His daughter is running to find a toy they threw to their puppy, the sun shining on her long hair and small body. There’s a steak smell, a glass of lemonade in his hand. The grass is so bright green, the sky is intensely blue, Peter is with Shuri over there, Rhodey is with Happy over there, his beloved wife is coming to sit by him in the chairs as the sun is getting close to the start of its set. 

 

Pepper furrows her brows at her husband. “What’s that look?”

 

“This...is the exact replica of the first dream I had about having Clara.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Well, no, Clara is getting Dalila’s toy instead of your earrings, lemonade is in my hand and not in a glass on a table, and the smell is hamburgers and not bacon, so kinda but kinda not,” Tony describes the differences. “But close enough.”

 

“Yeah,” Pepper nods. “This is really perfect though, Tony.”

 

“Yeah,” Tony breathes out. He kisses his wife tenderly before he watches his little girl in the field, again, playing with her golden retriever puppy and sees Peter and Shuri run over to her. The sun glows, the sky never ends, his feet touch the bare green grass, the air he breathes is fresh. 

 

“It is perfect,” Tony whispers. 

 

He made it. 


End file.
